Mexico's New President Is About To Change The Country Forever

Since he took over as president of Mexico, two weeks ago, he has
signed enough documents and made enough promises to
keep his government busy for the whole six years they have in
front of them.

In his inaugural address, he laid out a 13-point plan with 13
promises to catapult Mexico into the future.

Two days later he joined Mexico’s other major political parties
in signing the “Pact for Mexico,” in which all of the signees
agree on a 95-point action plan.

And those 95 points are not minor. The include opening the
petroleum industry to the private sector and ending the state
monopoly, creating universal social security and unemployment
insurance, a system for evaluating teachers to improve education,
providing every student in the school system with a computer,
defending human rights and the
rights of immigrants as well as the right to broadband
internet access and the licensing of two new television channels
to
compete with Televisa and TV Azteca.

If he only manages to get half of the things on the list done,
Peña Nieto will be the best president in Mexico’s history.

And the winds are blowing in his direction. After five years of
bad news — the worst recession on the continent after the
financial crisis of 2008 and a serious increase in
violence from drug cartels that has left nearly 60,000 people
dead — now Mexico is improving on all fronts.

Its economy grew by 5.5% in 2010, the highest growth rate seen in
ten years.

Mexico even exceeded Brazil’s growth rate in 2011, with 4.5%
growth. This year, with a 4% growth rate, Mexico’s growth is
twice that of Brazil. If growth continues at these rates, the
Mexican economy
could surpass the Brazilian economy by the end of the decade.

After signing the North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA) with the
United States and Canada in 1994, Mexico turned into a factory
for manufactured goods destined for the U.S. and Canada. Now it
is a factory for the whole world. Today,
Nissan is spending $2 billion to build a car factory in
Aguascalientes and Audi is spending $1.3 billion on a car factory
in Puebla.

There are more engineers graduating annually in Mexico than in
Germany, and the country is diversifying. It now has free trade
agreements with 44 countries and it is the country with the most
free trade agreements in the world.

This open policy suffered a setback in the last decade, when
China started making everything for everyone, paying the lowest
salaries on earth. But now the salaries in
China are rising, and the minimum wage in Shanghai is higher
than the minimum wage in Mexico.